Posts Tagged ‘Modern Technology’

You’ll excuse me if this isn’t up to my usual standard. I’m still feeling a bit delicate and out of it.

I knew I was in trouble when they came into my ER room with morphine.

Tuesday was going to be a heck of a day. I had a bunch of stuff at work to do and was on call for a spacecraft. Sue was coming home from her mother’s funeral in Australia and I was going to pick her up from the Harrisburg airport. So it was going to be a busy day, but I knew that if I got through it, the rest of the week would be a breeze.

And then about 2:00, my belly started hurting.

This had happened three weeks before. It had hurt so badly, in fact, I had gone into the ER. They had diagnosed a bad case of reflux and used a GI cocktail — maalox, lidocaine and belladonna — to set me right. So I chomped down some Maalox and tried to relax.

It got worse. By 6:00, I knew I was going to have to go the ER again. But I held on until 7:00, when Sue was changing planes in Chicago, so I could let her know. All our plans went out the window. I went over to our neighbors and imposed on them to look after Abby and drive me to the ER.

I thought they would give me a GI cocktail and have done with it. But then they came in and gave me some morphine for the pain. I have to say that while I respect morphine’s role in history, I don’t care for it myself. It makes the chest heavy and the mind wander. But I knew something was wrong. And then the doctor told me: he thought it was not reflux, but my gallbladder. A quick ultrasound confirmed it. And with two attacks in three weeks, I was going to have to have it out.

I had surgery the next afternoon through a laparoscope. They put four small ports on my right side and inflated my belly with CO2. They found my very diseased gallbladder, cut it out, closed off the arteries and ducts, cleaned me up and had me out in about half an hour. I have a vague recollection of being somewhat combative in recovery because I had to urinate badly and could not. I was confused and, to be frank, a little delusional. In fact, it would be a few hours before my systems recovered enough from anesthesia for me to empty my bladder of almost a liter of fluid. And it took me many hours before my mood recovered. I can’t imagine what it’s like for people who get really sick and have very serious surgery. The comparatively less amount of pain and suffering in this was enough for me. Now I can understand those people who say, “Hell with this. Give me some pain meds and let me die with dignity.”

It’s now been 24 hours and I’m home. And the more I think about it, the more I am amazed with modern medicine. A couple of centuries ago, my gallbladder would probably have led me to an agonizing death. A couple of decade ago, I would have had open surgery and spent weeks recovering. Now, four cuts and a day later, I’m home and should be recovered within a week or two.

I’m also very happy about my iPhone, which became my lifeline. Thanks to the iPhone, I was able to call all my favors in, keep Sue updated on my status, e-mail my colleagues so that they would take care of Swift and even play a few games of Scrabble and let everyone know, via Facebook and Twitter, what was happening. It could have been a very lonely night in the hospital with Sue out of town and Abby with friends and the rest of my family scattered over the country. Thanks to modern communications, it wasn’t.

And I’m also grateful to the good people I’ve surrounded myself with who made sure work was covered and that Abby was taken care of. Thanks to them, nothing was dropped on the floor.